He's since talked with thousands of readers about the challenges they face in putting those ideas into practice. The problem, he's found, is that the complexity of modern life has created a false dichotomy between things that are "essential and hard," and things that are "easy and trivial." But what if the trivial tasks became harder and the essential ones became easier? If the important projects became enjoyable, while the trivial distractions lost their appeal entirely?In Effortless, McKeown offers proven strategies for making the most important activities the easiest ones. For example: - Streamline your process by mapping out the minimum number of steps. - Prevent problems later by solving them before they happen. - Let Go of perfectionism by finding the "courage to be rubbish." - Accelerate your learning by leveraging the best of what others know.By making the toughest tasks just a little bit easier, we can accomplish more of what matters, without burning out.

    Get a grip and gain control with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Inside Traction, you’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company with more focus, growth and enjoyment. Based on years of real-world implementation, the EOS is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned.

    Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition.Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results.Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

    The only diploma that hangs in Warren Buffett’s office is his certificate from Dale Carnegie Training. Lee Iacocca credits Carnegie for giving him the courage to speak in public. Dilbert creator Scott Adams called Carnegie’s teachings “life-changing.” In today’s world, where more and more of our communication takes place across wires and screens, Carnegie’s lessons have not only lasted but become all the more critical. Though he never could have predicted technology’s trajectory, Carnegie proves a wise and helpful teacher in this digital landscape. To demonstrate the many ways his lessons remain relevant, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., has reimagined his prescriptions and his advice for this difficult digital age. We may communicate today with different tools and with greater speed, but Carnegie’s advice on how to communicate, lead, and work efficiently remains priceless across the ages.

    The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck?Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes.By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.

    Drop the Pink Elephant: 15 Ways to Say What You Mean...and Mean What You Say ...

    Drawing on Lopp's management experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland, this book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other. It is a place full of dysfunctional bright people who are in an incredible hurry to find the next big thing so they can strike it rich and then do it all over again. Among these people are managers, a strange breed of people who through a mystical organizational ritual have been given power over your future and your bank account.Whether you're an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what the heck a manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you.

    Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: • How to get new customers, clients, or patients and how make more profit from existing ones. • Why “big business” style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. • How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. • A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. • How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. • How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. • How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.

     During her multibook investigation into understanding human nature, Gretchen Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question "How do I respond to expectations?" we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively. More than 600,000 people have taken her online quiz, and managers, doctors, teachers, spouses, and parents already use the framework to help people make significant, lasting change. The Four Tendencies hold practical answers if you've ever thought...· People can rely on me, but I can't rely on myself.· How can I help someone to follow good advice?· People say I ask too many questions.· How do I work with someone who refuses to do what I ask or who keeps telling me what to do?With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. It's far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.

    Bosses, colleagues, customers—but also family, friends, and in-laws—they all have “suggestions” for our performance, parenting, or appearance. We know that feedback is essential for healthy relationships and professional development—but we dread it and often dismiss it.That’s because receiving feedback sits at the junction of two conflicting human desires. We do want to learn and grow. And we also want to be accepted just as we are right now. Thanks for the Feedback is the first book to address this tension head on. It explains why getting feedback is so crucial yet so challenging, and offers a powerful framework to help us take on life’s blizzard of off-hand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited advice with curiosity and grace.The business world spends billions of dollars and millions of hours each year teaching people how to give feedback more effectively. Stone and Heen argue that we’ve got it backwards and show us why the smart money is on educating receivers— in the workplace and in personal relationships as well.Coauthors of the international bestseller Difficult Conversations, Stone and Heen have spent the last ten years working with businesses, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. With humor and clarity, they blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice. The book is destined to become a classic in the world of leadership, organizational behavior, and education.

    Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning from lots of little failures and from small but highly significant wins that allow them to happen upon unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.           Based on deep and extensive research, including more than 200 interviews with leading innovators, Sims discovered that productive, creative thinkers and doers—from Ludwig van Beethoven to Thomas Edison and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—practice a key set of simple but ingenious experimental methods—such as failing quickly to learn fast, tapping into the genius of play, and engaging in highly immersed observation—that free their minds, opening them up to making unexpected connections and perceiving invaluable insights. These methods also unshackle them from the constraints of overly analytical thinking and linear problem solving that our education places so much emphasis on, as well as from the fear of failure, all of which thwart so many of us in trying to be more innovative.               Reporting on a fascinating range of research, from the psychology of creative blocks to the influential Silicon Valley–based field of design thinking, Sims offers engaging and wonderfully illuminating accounts of breakthrough innovators at work, including how Hewlett-Packard stumbled onto the breakaway success of the first hand-held calculator; the remarkable storyboarding process at Pixar films that has been the key to their unbroken streak of box office successes; the playful discovery process by which Frank Gehry arrived at his critically acclaimed design for Disney Hall; the aha revelation that led Amazon to pursue its wildly successful affiliates program; and the U.S. Army’s ingenious approach to counterinsurgency operations that led to the dramatic turnaround in Iraq.               Fast paced and as entertaining as it is illuminating, Little Bets offers a whole new way of thinking about how to break away from the narrow strictures of the methods of analyzing and problem solving we were all taught in school and unleash our untapped creative powers.

    Cottrell introduces us to Jeff, a successful corporate manager who has hit a major wall. Jeff has been leading his team, quarter after quarter, to great sales and better profits for several years -- until now. The tricks that used to work wonders have lost their magic; Jeff is in a slump and is at a loss to find his way out of it.Overworked, stressed, and feeling that his personal and professional lives are at risk, Jeff reaches out to the father of a college buddy, a retired and tremendously accomplished former executive named Tony. Tony and Jeff agree to meet every Monday for ten weeks to work through Jeff's problems and get his career back on track.In the course of these intimate sessions, Jeff discovers the secrets of real leadership: "Until I accept total responsibility -- no matter what -- I will not be able to put plans in place to accomplish my goals." And, "My success is the result of making better choices and recovering quickly from poor choices."Tony leads Jeff through tough lessons in how to manage his people, how to manage his own time, how to manage his superiors, and how to escape from "management land." Most of all, Jeff learns that his success is intimately bound with the success of his people and that tolerating lackluster performance in himself and others on the team only leads to discontent from his most prized and productive employees.Through Jeff's mentoring sessions, the reader meets a character of integrity who dispenses homespun but effective wisdom. Spend time with Tony and Jeff at their Monday morning meetings, and you will find yourself on the road to becoming a better leader and being more successful at work.

    If you're ready to join them, this is your handbook that will take the ideas in your head and the dream in your heart and turn them into action. * Help you create a step-by-step, customized plan to start and grow your business * Show you how to manage your time so you can have a business-and life-that you love * Explain overwhelming business stuff like pricing, taxes, and budgeting in simple terms *Teach you how to use marketing to reach the right people in the right way

    It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it's more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people's entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise "wisdom of the crowd."Kawasaki's lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.As Kawasaki writes, "Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do." That's a big goal, but one that's possible for all of us.

    Those beliefs have inspired expensive attempts to shield employees from change, involve them in high-level decision-making, and keep them happy with endless “satisfaction surveys” and workplace perks. But what these engagement programs actually do, Cy Wakeman says, is inflate expectations and sow unhappiness, leaving employees unprepared to adapt to even minor changes necessary to the organization’s survival. Rather than driving performance and creating efficiencies, these programs fuel entitlement and drama, costing millions in time and profit.It is high time to reinvent leadership thinking. Stop worrying about your employees’ happiness, and start worrying about their accountability. Cy Wakeman teaches you how to hire “emotionally inexpensive” people, solicit only the opinions you need, and promote self-awareness in your whole team. No Ego disposes with unproven HR maxims, and instead offers a complete plan to turn your office from a den of discontent to a happy, productive place.